


Anthropogony

by oxymoronic



Series: Yuletide Fics [2]
Category: The Talos Principle (Video Game)
Genre: Apocalypse, Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life, Smoking, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27374110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: It’s long gone 2 a.m., but the clock doesn’t mean much at the end of the world.
Series: Yuletide Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2148807
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Anthropogony

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sandalwoodbox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandalwoodbox/gifts).



> happy yuletide!! i'm afraid this was the only one of your fandoms i was familiar with, but it was a real pleasure having the opportunity to play a little in the rich sandbox of this world. i do hope this fits into the discussion of Alex's work you were craving! as well as Alex's recordings i was particularly inspired by three bits of written evidence from the game:
> 
> [Welcome.eml](https://talosprinciple.fandom.com/wiki/Welcome.eml) | [Against_survival.eml](https://talosprinciple.fandom.com/wiki/Against_survival.eml) | [Questioning_doubt_conf.txt](https://talosprinciple.fandom.com/wiki/Questioning_doubt_conf.txt)

It’s long gone 2 a.m., but the clock doesn’t mean much at the end of the world. Alex has had the email open for forty-five minutes on her flickering monitor, trying to ignore its occasional habit of warping the letters into wobbly green code. It’s a stupid use of time when time is the one thing she absolutely cannot afford to waste; all the code she could’ve written, the simulations she could’ve run, the bugs she could’ve fixed. It’s all been derailed by one passing email that has somehow sent doubt burrowing into her mind like a parasite.

Fuck, Alex thinks, rubbing her eyes. I need a smoke.

She drifts automatically through the EL’s damp corridors towards the western door. In the stillness of the night air she can hear the hum of the distant generators, the gentle click of her feet on the concrete, the soft crashing water of the dam in the very distance. It’s a familiar route; the west-facing platform is the most exposed, and usually deserted. It’s her most consistent refuge, the place she can reliably sneak to in order to stare at the horizon and chainsmoke in privacy until her mind smooths back out again into a careful, analytic blank. 

She winches open the airlock and embraces the cold wind as it tears daggers through her flimsy outer-weather gear, a pleasant burst of sensation in contrast to the carefully-controlled fug of the climate inside. With a dim moon and a clear sky, the stars are beautiful tonight. Pinpricks of bright light hang up above her as if caught in a vast web, each a little voice flinging out its message against the surrounding dark. She’d wanted to be an astronaut when she was very young; later, she’d watched with barely-concealed excitement as the prospect of commercial flights to space became more and more possible. Now all her childhood dreams feel like someone else’s memories.

The door rasps open behind her with another long shriek. Alex’s mood sours initially at the thought of being disturbed, but the figure of Nadya silhouetted by the soft amber light of the corridor beyond is in truth very welcome. They’ve not spent much time together in recent days; not alone, anyway. In between Bob and Rob’s good-natured bickering and Arkady’s constant gloominess, team meetings don’t leave much room for idle conversation.

Nadya gives Alex a little wave, battling her way across the terrace against the icy breeze. She refuses Alex’s offer of a cigarette, leaning up against the rail to stare straight up at the sky with clear intent. “What are you looking for?” Alex asks, squinting along her line of sight towards the west.

“The ISS,” Nadya replies, hunching up against the cold like a songbird puffed up on a branch. “I’ve watched out for it since I was a kid. I figured I might not still be around next time it’s visible from here.”

Alex had forgotten all about the handful of astronauts trapped up there. She wonders what it’s like, watching the lights on earth go out one by one. The station itself will fall out of the sky six months from now, once the last of their fuel reserve’s burnt up; just one more crater in the desert, one more pile of rotting metal at the bottom of the ocean.

“Astronaut food,” Alex says absently. “Better than these godawful MREs they keep giving us.”

Nadya grins. “I did hope the apocalypse might at least involve something better to eat,” she agrees. “Bob thinks we should all get a last meal when we show symptoms, like convicts on death row.”

“What would you get?”

“Mangoes,” Nadya replies, wistful. “Sometimes I can’t believe I’m never going to eat another mango. You?”

“Ben and Jerry’s peanut butter ice cream,” Alex answers after a pause. “A whole tub all to myself.”

The silence that follows is comfortable, but it invites back the unease that had been preying on her mind before Nadya arrived. Her thoughts wander to the email still sat decomposing in her inbox, leeching out its cruel message like so much nuclear waste. Its words stick in her mind like broken bones, the accusations it presents of barbarity, of vanity, of –

_What you are building, Ms. Drennan, is a prison._

Alex shivers. “Do you ever worry – what if this whole project is just my ego?”

Nadya looks across, her surprise clearly written on her face. “Where’s this coming from?” she asks, forehead creasing into a frown. “Of course not. It’s not like you’re going to live to reap the rewards of any of it. Besides, what’s that quote about legacy? That it’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see?”

Alex stares at Nadya, the distant recollection of a past life condensing in her mind like smoke. “Oh my god,” she says flatly, “Is that – is that _Hamilton_?!”

“Shut up,” Nadya replies, blushing a little as she stifles a laugh. “But for what it’s worth, no. I don’t think this is all your vanity. If it were, you wouldn’t be out here at two in the morning worrying about the ethics of it all.”

The cigarette burns down to Alex’s fingertips, a sharp flash of heat against her skin before she stubs it out. She rubs her eyes, sucks in a deep lungful of the icy air, and tries to steady her mind. She’s silly to doubt herself. She doesn’t even know this Jensen, and here she is at the heart of a facility designed to fulfil her goals, surrounded by people who trust and respect her judgement.

“That’s what science is anyway,” Nadya continues. “Disobedience. Questioning the status quo. Not just following instruction, but weighing up the options and making a choice motivated by the evidence.”

“Willingly biting the proverbial fruit,” Alex murmurs to herself. The flower of an idea blooms into life inside her mind, intricate and galvanizing. “Intelligent life can’t just be curious. It has to learn to disobey.”

“That’s more like it,” Nadya says, smiling at her as she knocks their shoulders together. The contact makes something soft unfurl in Alex’s chest, a dizzying burst of emotion pushing back through her mind and body in a way that’s become scarce of late. She indulges in another few deep breaths of the freezing air, lets it ground and steady her in contrast with the bright warmth of Nadya’s body pressed against hers. In that moment she feels wonderfully, beautifully alive.

“There she is,” Nadya says, and Alex looks up at that violent speck of light, that precious moment of human spirit captured in crude form. We did that, Alex thinks. Humans did. In all our capriciousness and foolishness and cruelty, we still did it. All that discipline, that ambition, that knowledge, that courage, all those years of scientific effort condensed down into a flimsy metal bucket circumnavigating their little planet on barely a handful of code.

Whatever our faults, Alex thinks, for a time we were truly something.


End file.
